


Seeds Taking Root

by donutsweeper



Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: Family, Gen, Moving On, Past Drug Use, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-08-21 09:18:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16573826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donutsweeper/pseuds/donutsweeper
Summary: Luke was trying to go forward and move on after almost dying. He was well aware that it wouldn't be easy and that recovery wasn't a straight line, but with any luck he might just make it.





	Seeds Taking Root

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jeffgoldblumvevo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeffgoldblumvevo/gifts).



> Familiar dialogue borrowed from episodes 4 and 6.
> 
> Thanks to W for the beta!

"We weren't about to discourage that instinct. Your mom would say, 'Oh no, we water that seed until that's her tree.'"

* * *

Luke felt a little lost when the doctors decided he was almost ready to check out of the hospital. Should he try to go back to rehab? There probably wouldn't be a bed, but Paige might be able to work with him on an outpatient basis, depending. And then there was the fact he hadn't used but had been used and made to use, if rat poison even counted as using? He'd earned that ninety day medallion fair and square but that was a week and a lifetime ago.

He had a bit of time to make the decision. Not much, but a little. Before anything else he had to get a clean bill of health. And after that it wasn't like he could immediately just hop on a plane and go back to LA, there was still the funeral to have first. Another funeral. This one a private service with a closed casket.

"It's not because Shirl can't, couldn't, fix him up. Dad looks fine," Steve had told him, "it was just his heart. But," and then Steve trailed off in that way he always did when he couldn't settle on what to say or how to say it. Shirley and Theo didn't even try to argue the point, which was unlike them, but maybe they'd all fought so much and gotten so little out of it over the years they were too worn to bother. And it wasn't like Luke was going to push for an open casket; the idea of a viewing seemed like tempting fate to him so he was fine with skipping it. 

One of the reasons for keeping the funeral closed to the public was that the media had gotten wind of Dad dying at Hill House and was having a field day with it. The fact the coroner's report stated it was just a heart attack didn't seem to factor into the story they were telling at all. They just kept dragging out all the stuff the tabloids wrote about what happened back then and pulling out lines from Steve's book and tying it into what happened to Mom, to Nellie, and now to Dad.

As a result the funeral would be just them, the four surviving Crains, Kevin and the kids, Leigh, and Aunt Janet.

* * *

Aunt Janet's house had seemed so small when they first went to live with her. But after Hill House nearly any home would feel tiny.

"Are you sure you don't mind sharing with your sister, Luke? This was just my sewing nook, it's a little small for a bedroom for even one of you, let alone for two to share. Wouldn't it be better if I put you in with Steven?" 

Aunt Janet had this way of bending down when she spoke to them, like she was trying not to be too big or tower over them. It meant it was easy to meet her eyes and her eyes shone a bit. Like Mommy's. Luke knew they weren't the same, she wasn't the same, but looking anyone in the eyes now scared him. He opened his mouth to try to answer, but the words got all caught together and stuck in his throat. He wasn't sure what to say, what he could say. 

Nellie knew though and spoke for him. "Luke wants to be with me, Aunt Janet. He needs to be with me."

"Now, Nellie, don't pressure your brother. You can't know what he prefers, he needs to tell us."

"I'm not pressuring him. It's what he wants. I know it. I just know."

"Nellie…" 

"It's a twin thing." 

"That may well be, dear, but I'd like to hear it from him. Luke, what do you want?"

Nellie wrapped her arm around his shoulders, pulling him close and he clung to her for a moment, trying to borrow a little of her strength and to stop being so afraid. The words, when they finally came, were soft and so, so quiet. "Nellie. I wanna be with Nellie."

Aunt Janet smiled that crumpled, sad smile all adults seemed to have around them now and pressed a kiss into his hair. "Okay, sweetie, it'll be a tight squeeze, but we'll make it work."

* * *

Luke had missed the chaos of Steve showing up at his hospital room without Dad. He'd missed a lot of things for a lot of years, between the using and the rehab and the lying and stealing, but the recovery from the rat poison and the House and the broken ribs meant that there'd been a chance for Theo and Shirley and Steve to discuss things while he was still too out of it to be included in the conversation. He wasn't sure _what_ they'd discussed, if anything at all, but once he was clearheaded enough to be able to see it he could tell they were different with each other now than they used to be.

Of course, that might be a result of what happened before they all got to the hospital instead. Considering the night they'd all had, how could anyone be the same after it? If it actually happened. Did any of what he remembered happening there really happen? Maybe it was all a hallucination as a result of the gas fumes. 

No, the rat poison had been real enough. 

But he hadn't shot himself up with it. He was certain of that. Not only because he wouldn't have - he was clean and he'd been clean for more than ninety days and he wasn't about to slip, not at Nellie's funeral - but he literally couldn't have, he hadn't had any needles with him. He'd walked into that house with five cans of gasoline and a lighter and not much else and somehow ended up locked in the Red Room with his siblings, lying on the floor, and a needle filled with rat poison in his arm. 

They told him that he'd died that room. When they brought him to Sacred Heart Shirley had explained to the doctors that when they found him he hadn’t been breathing so she and Steve had performed CPR on him. The doctors believed it, to them he showed all the signs of it, including the bruises and the broken ribs that were expected after something like that.

But it wasn't the CPR that brought him back. 

It was Nell.

He saw her at the tea party and then she was there, in the room with them. All five of them together for the first time in who knew how long. But logically he knew she couldn't have been there; she was dead. But they were at Hill House. And not just at Hill House, but in the Red Room. And therefore maybe she was. He just didn't know how to bring it up. How do you work into casual conversation, "Oh, hey, when we were locked in that room, was our dead sister there? Did she save me? Did she tell me I had to live? Did she say I wouldn't have to be without her because she wasn't gone?"

* * *

Theo pushed the door open without knocking and poked her head into the room, looking around for a moment before asking, "Luke, do you know where Nellie's gone?"

"You're supposed to knock, Theo, that's the rules."

"Yeah, well you and Nellie were supposed to be at the dinner table with your hands washed five minutes ago. _That's_ the rules too and you're not there are you?"

"You're not at the table," Luke pointed out.

"But I was, at least until Aunt Janet told me to go get you two and I can't find her anywhere."

"Did you check Nellie's room?"

Theo rolled her eyes. "First thing. But when she wasn't there I figured she was in here with you. I'm still not sure why Aunt Janet had you move into Steve's room now that he's gone to college while I still have to share with Shirley. It's not fair, you two are always together anyway."

"Aunt Janet said it was because she's a girl and I'm a boy and we're ten now and it was time." Luke shrugged. It wasn't like he really understood it himself. "And this way she didn't need to change the wallpaper."

"It's so stupid. I won't have my own room until Shirley goes to college too and that's not for years and you have your own room now but don't want it."

"I liked being in with Nellie. I don't like being without her." His shoulders shook at the thought, and it felt like someone poured ice cold water down his neck and under his shirt and down his spine. "It's scary."

"You are such a baby sometimes. You gotta start being on your own eventually, it may as well be now." Theo huffed, but held out her hand. "Come on, we're late for dinner. Nellie probably got it in her head to play hide and seek again without telling us and when she does that you're the only one who can ever find her."

Luke took her hand with both of his, the green glove twisting slightly as he gripped it tight. "It's Nellie, I can always find her."

"I know, I know. 'Cause it's a twin thing, right?"

"It's a twin thing," he agreed.

* * *

Steve and Leigh were back together but still brittle around each other in that way that made every conversation around them a challenge for Luke because he was afraid that if he said the wrong thing it'd start a cascade and not only the floor they were standing on, but the whole world would crumble under and around them. They offered him a place to stay, but he couldn't take them up on it, not when he'd already done so much damage to them when he'd been using. They needed to rebuild their own foundation from scratch, they didn't need the extra pressure of someone else in the mix who might take chips at what they were trying to create, even without intending to.

Besides he might not have been able to get his bed at rehab back but Nell's house was sitting there empty, or, if not empty at least currently unused. Unoccupied? "She wouldn't mind me using it," he explained to Steve on the ride over.

"I know. I just. I don't like the idea of you being there all alone, Luke. I wish you'd stay with us, for a little while at least."

Luke had heard that concerned tone in people's voices for years now. Decades even. Staring out the window, he watched the city fly by as he bit his bottom lip, trying to figure out what to say. Eventually he settled on, "I know you're worried that I'm going to use, but I'm not. I know you don't believe me, believe in me, and you have every reason to think that but—"

"No! Luke, no, that's not. That's not what I meant." The car jerked over, pulling up to the curb and slamming roughly into park. "Luke." Steve reached out, his hand hesitating for a moment before coming to rest on Luke's shoulder. "Luke, look at me. Look at me," he repeated when Luke didn't turn to face him.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Luke turned, his eyes darting to meet Steve's for a second before quickly shifting away. "It's okay if you did," he offered softly. "If you'd meant that."

"No, no it's not." Steve gripped Luke's shoulder tightly, to the point it was almost uncomfortable. "Yes, I am worried about you. But not because I think you are going to use but because you just got out of the hospital. Because you… died. I almost lost you, Luke. I thought I _had_ lost you. Luke," he said the name like a sigh. "I've been a shit big brother. I'm sorry."

"What? No, Steve, it's not your fault. I've—"

But Steve interrupted him before he could explain. "No, it is. There were so many things I refused to see, so many times I refused to listen. You told us what happened, you and Nell, and we didn't believe you. We never believed you and that is on us. On me. Hell, when I think about my books; I wrote about Abigail for fuck's sake! About her and Mom and the Red Room, but it was all bullshit. You fucking told us what fucking happened and I didn't believe you. I didn't listen and I am sorry. I am so sorry."

"Stevie…"

"I'm going to do better, Luke. I swear to you, I am going to do better." They couldn't hug, not in the car, not with their seat belts on, but Steve gently wrapped his hand around Luke's neck and squeezed lightly, his thumb stroking back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Luke counted the strokes in his head.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven….

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven….

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven….

* * *

Luke knelt down at end of Nellie's bed with the box of buttons and began putting them on her bed, one by one. "You need seven and you set them up like this."

"Why seven?"

"Mom, Dad, Steven, Shirl, Theo, you, me." He touched each one as he named them. "It has to be seven. It helps if you touch each one and count out loud."

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven."

"That keeps you safe. Sometimes you gotta do it a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Don't forget to count."

* * *

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven….

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven….

Steve took his hand away, patting Luke on the shoulder twice before taking the car out of park and putting on the turn signal. As they pulled away from the curb it began to rain.


End file.
